A great console RTS is like Bigfoot. Everyone claims to have proof that it exists, but on closer inspection, it’s nothing more than a scam. It’s a PC port of one title or another with awkward controls and units that… Continue Reading →

A great console RTS is like Bigfoot. Everyone claims to have proof that it exists, but on closer inspection, it’s nothing more than a scam. It’s a PC port of one title or another with awkward controls and units that are almost illegible on screen.

The problem with building an real-time strategy game for a console is that the concept needs to built from the ground up. You can’t have key strokes on an Xbox 360 controller. You have to prioritize commands with the limited number of buttons on the gamepad. You have to look at a console and work the genre to its strengths.

Thankfully, Ensemble Studios did just that with Halo Wars and I got a chance to see the fruit of their labors last Wednesday. The project is unfortunately the last for the team, but according to Dave Pottinger, the lead designer. The team will continue support the game after its release.

Taking place 20 years before the events of Halo: Combat Evolved, the game starts off with the conflict between the UNSC and the Covenant over the planet of Harvest. The world houses an artifact of interest and the two factions have been fighting over it for five years.

That’s where Sgt. Forge comes in. I played two tutorials and the first three missions of the campaign, which star the war veteran. The whole scenario takes you through the first general arc of the game.

Overall, Halo Wars is a simpler take on the genre. The A button is used to select units. Pressing it once can select one unit. Pressing it twice can select a group of one kind. By holding down the A button, you can paint a circle around the units you want.

Pressing the Left Bumper selects all the units on the map. Pressing the Right Bumper selects the local units on screen. X moves your character while the Y button activates a special attack.

As I used these buttons to control Sgt. Forge, the game’s hero character, I found it fairly simple. You can’t set patrols or formation, but there is the ability to select different groups of units in army by pressing the right trigger. You can command Warthogs to move in one direction while telling your infantry to enter a sniping post or take cover behind a barricade.

The other side of the equation is the micromanagement of the economy. The game simplifies base building by giving players a limited number of slots around a base. Now they don’t have to worry about how they should build a busy. They have to worry about how many barracks or factories to build.

The limited slots force these choices so that players have to create units aimed directly at a certain strategy. If you want more resources to make units, you’ll have to improve or build more supply bays or find supplies out in the field. (If you haven’t notice, supplies are the one resource in the game.) If you want to get some of the higher level vehicles, players will have to build reactors to increase their tech level.

So far so good, the balance between what Pottinger likes to call guns versus butter is done extremely well. Ensemble Studios simplified the control scheme and scope enough that the game is playable and takes some skill. The only thing that annoyed me was that you could go only one way when quick-selecting units with the right trigger. The left trigger is used to control the speed of your cursor.

Aside from the controls, the other element where Halo Wars succeeds is by making units and upgrades instantly recongizable. Pottinger calls this being “parsible.” “We wanted to have a straight-forward unit scheme,” he said. “You need to be see the units and know what they do.”

It’s a vital element when it comes to working on a console where a television may not have the resolution of a monitor. It becomes even more important when you take into the account the rock-paper-scissor aspect of the units.

In Halo Wars, vehicles beat infantry; infantry can defeat aircrafts and aircrafts dominate vehicles. Instantly, knowing what an enemy and adjusting a counter will be vital to the game. To help this process along, the team also limited the number of units.

Initially, the team had five UNSC infantry units planned, but they had to cut it down because it became too unwieldy. Along with the unit types, Ensemble Studios also took some care into coming up with upgrades that would be distinct. For example, new blood adds another unit to your infantry squad. You can see that on screen. Later, they can upgrade to medics, which is a different color.

Lastly, I got to play a skirmish as the Convenant. Thankfully, Ensemble Studios put a lot of though in how to make the race. The Covenant isn’t just a mirror image of humans. The race actually place diffrently. Pottinger says that controlling the Covenant is more visceral.

For example, one of the hero units, the Prophet of Regret, has a special power that players can control. Using the cleaning beam, they can move the column of light across armies or bases, wrecking havoc on everything it touches.

The fact that the big Covenant leaders are actually on the battlefield also speaks to the differences in the philosophies behind the two races. The Covenant hero units also offer different strategies. For example, one hero has the ability to act as a beacon to instantly transport armies to his position. This could perhaps be useful in surprise attacks or in StarCraft parlance “Reaver drops.”

On top of that, the Covenant buildings are slightly different. There’s an instant teleport pad near the base. Each base also has the option for shields. Facing off against the Covenant in a 3 v. 3 map will be very interesting.

Overall, Halo Wars has me very excited for 2009. But it also speaks to the power of the genre that a number of different studios are trying their hand at bring the RTS to the console. Ubisoft Shanghai tried to create a voice controlled RTS with Tom Clancy’s EndWar. Meanwhile, Creative Assembly’s Stormrise is another take that may be the most promising.